As a wave of anti-union bills are introduced across the country following the wake of Wall Street financial crisis, many analysts are picking up on the theory that award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein first argued in her 2007 bestselling book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In the book, she reveals how those in power use times of crisis to push through undemocratic and extreme free market economic policies. “...

Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher was convicted last week of two felony counts for disrupting an auction of more than 100,000 acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling in December 2008. Award-winning journalist Naomi Klein talks about why she signed on to a public letter of support for DeChristopher. "What did Tim DeChristopher do wrong? They said that he participated in an auction and without the intention to pay," Klein...

Award-winning journalist Naomi Klein has been reporting on global warming and the climate justice movement for years. “My fear is that climate change is the biggest crisis of all,” Klein says. “If we don’t come up with a positive vision of how climate change can make our economies and our world more just, more livable, cleaner, fairer, then this crisis will be exploited to militarize our economies, to create fortress continents. And...

Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif took part in Egypt’s revolution and was in Cairo’s Tahrir Square nearly every day of the 18-day popular uprising. She joins us in our studio to discuss the revolution and its significance. “Almost overnight a civic space was created in Tahrir Square that was the ideal space, that one imagined, that everybody imagined, how the country should be or how any country should be,” Soueif says. “Everybody was finding the...

In their coverage of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to undermine public workers’ unions, many journalists have parroted Walker’s claim that unionized state workers get their pensions "subsidized" by the state. We speak with investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston, who counters the assertion that pensions are costing taxpayers by pointing out that the workers themselves contribute 100...

"Nobody goes to jail,” writes Matt Taibbi in the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine. “This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth." Taibbi explains how the American people have been...

After a week of pro-democracy demonstrations in Libya that left more than 300 people dead, protesters have continued to demand an end to the 42-year regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. One of Gaddafi’s sons, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, addressed the nation over Libyan State TV on Sunday and threatened there would be civil war if the protests did not end. For more, we are joined by the acclaimed Libyan poet and scholar, Khaled Mattawa. “I think the...

In recent weeks, popular uprisings in the Arab world have led to the ouster of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the imminent end of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, a new Jordanian government, and a pledge by Yemen’s longtime dictator to leave office at the end of his term. We speak to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky in an extended interview about what these popular uprisings mean for the future of the Middle East and U.S....

The United States has given tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Egypt over the last decades. Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Electric have provided tanks, missiles, engines and more to the Hosni Mubarak regime. Following the massive popular uprising, U.S. foreign aid continues to flow to Egypt, although the Obama administration has placed the program under review. We speak with William Hartung, author of Prophets of War:...

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lumumba’s pan-Africanism and his vision of a united Congo gained him many enemies. Both Belgium and the United States actively sought to have him killed. The CIA ordered his assassination but could not complete the job. Instead, the United States and Belgium covertly...

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